Scoble’s Achilles heel is video

Video is the future of the Internet, right? Everybody knows that — Google buys YouTube, the Skype boys launch Joost, video blogs are the bomb, etc., etc. And there’s no question that a well-done video clip can be incredibly affecting, and moving. But is it a great information-delivery tool? I would argue that it is not. Visual? Yes. Emotionally powerful? Yes. Packed with information that is easily understandable? No — or at least very rarely.

In a nutshell, I think that is part of Scoble’s much-talked about problem with Engadget. Forget about whether Engadget has a policy of not linking to blogs, or has it in for Scoble, or is getting too big for its britches and thinks it is part of the mainstream media now, or whatever the former Microsoft blogger is getting at in his rant about how Engadget didn’t link to his “scoop” about Intel’s new chip process.

Stay with me here. Scoble initially said that Engadget ignored his video for Podtech, but as Engadget writer Ryan Block describes it in his long post on the topic, an Engadget staffer looked at Scoble’s video and didn’t see enough newsworthy content to justify a link. The bottom line, I think, is that Scoble basically toured Intel’s plant and got some video of employees in clean-room “bunny suits,” etc. and a comment about the new 45-nanometer process, and that’s pretty much it.

Is the new process important for the future of computing? Sure it is. But the fact is that the New York Times story, which Scoble craps on everybody for linking to instead of him, does a better job of explaining why it’s important than Scoble’s videos do. In a lot of ways, his videos make a nice accessory to the story — but they don’t *tell* the story. At least not for me. But then, I’m a word guy, so maybe I’m biased. But James Robertson agrees with me (and so does SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill), and TDavid thinks Scoble could use some time with a video editor (although Robert disagrees in the comments below).

I'm a Toronto-based writer, and my favorite things to write about are social technology, media and the evolution of online behavior

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